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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday June 27 2020, @07:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-your-base-are-belong-to-us dept.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/06/chinese-bank-requires-foreign-firm-to-install-app-with-covert-backdoor/

A large, multinational technology company got a nasty surprise recently as it was expanding its operations to China. The software a local bank required the company to install so it could pay local taxes contained an advanced backdoor.

The cautionary tale, detailed in a report published Thursday, said the software package, called Intelligent Tax and produced by Beijing-based Aisino Corporation, worked as advertised. Behind the scenes, it also installed a separate program that covertly allowed its creators to remotely execute commands or software of their choice on the infected computer. It was also digitally signed by a Windows trusted certificate.
[...]
Trustwave didn't identify the two companies that encountered GoldenSpy or the local Chinese bank that required that Intelligent Tax be installed. Representatives of Aisino Corporation didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment for this post.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @10:14PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @10:14PM (#1013420)

    Takes deep breath...

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by corey on Saturday June 27 2020, @10:19PM (2 children)

    by corey (2202) on Saturday June 27 2020, @10:19PM (#1013424)

    Yeah, says a lot about it hey.

    If this were am American, European or other western bank, it would be front page news and their reputation would be trashed. But being Chinese, people will just shrug and go read the next news piece on Trump.

    I wonder when the Chinese will wake up to this, and realise this type of thing is why we don't want Huawei doing our 5G network infrastructure.

    • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Sunday June 28 2020, @02:46AM

      by Lagg (105) on Sunday June 28 2020, @02:46AM (#1013540) Homepage Journal

      I'll believe people would be outraged about it happening for (e.g.) BoA - or even understand the barest details - the moment they start being outraged about modern midshelf TV adware. And plain ol' untrustworthy weird firmware like my printer's. That constantly wants to update itself over the air.

      Even when people find out about it and do get outraged. As a whole they really [cs.vu.nl], really [arstechnica.com], really [irdeto.com] give no shits about backdoors or the potential for them. When people don't get outraged, you get the spyware running without much backlash (until very recently anyway, my inactive chrome store account said they updated policy and automated checks to deal with this) in phone barcode scanners and the like.

      I mean I hope you're right about it being a matter of "when" they'll wake up. Because 5G to me seems like brand with which to build unholy point-to-point reference jumps of other brand names. That megacorps can build contracts with and establish monopolies. More than it resembles any actual protocol. Is there even any set of spec PDFs for any of this *G shit after LTE at all? So if the chinese population would get around to caring that would be nice. But I figure they currently have other things going on.

      --
      http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @03:50AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @03:50AM (#1013971)

      Why would the Chinese be outraged? Their concept of government and separation of powers are quite different from the rest of the non-totalitarian world. Hence why a lot of them only see one side of the Huawei debacle, that is Chinese discrimination.

      Discussing anything about the Chinese government with most Chinese, even migrants, is kinda like discourse with a religious zealot; you can tell even if they're good natured person, their reality view is some what distorted by a fundamental warped view of the Chinese government's role in the country and the world. Yes, there are exceptions to this of course where some have enough critical thinking to pull themselves out of that quagmire, but most do not due to the conditioning they're exposed to since birth.

  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday June 28 2020, @10:40AM (2 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Sunday June 28 2020, @10:40AM (#1013622)

    Unfortunately they don't say which CA issued it, merely the company it came from, and since code signing certs are so routinely stolen for use in malware (you can buy them online) that name doesn't really mean anything. Could be malware slipped into the supply chain by a third party, could be bank-created malware, could be PLA-created malware, there's no way to tell.

    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday June 28 2020, @10:42AM (1 child)

      by driverless (4770) on Sunday June 28 2020, @10:42AM (#1013623)

      Oh, and I had to guess I'd say it was third-party, the Chinese government/PLA doesn't need to put spyware into stuff, it already has the same access to networks and systems that the NSA has in the US.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @10:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @10:22PM (#1013862)

        You say both of these things as fact, but just because things fit your worldview does not make them true, let along "facts."